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Starting a priest
So you want to be a Priest? Priests are healers in groups. They are responsible for the staying power of any high-end group, and their job can be thankless, but it is essential, and most experienced players realize this. As a priest, you have a little less versatility than some of the other classes when specializing towards healing, but when things get hairy, you'll have your hands so full you won't even realize it. If you're considering playing a priest, you'll have to ask yourself a few questions, first: * Do I mind taking up a caster role, in the back of the fight, as a low DPS class? * Do I mind playing a class which requires me to learn both soloing with Shadow Talents and grouping with Holy Talents? * If I'm going to do PVP, am I comfortable with the pressure of frequently being the #1 target? * Can I think quickly, and handle a large set of hotkeys in the process of getting my job done? * Do I mind the pressure of being the most indispensible member of a group and being blamed when things go wrong? * Do I subsequently not mind the fact that I may not get a lot of attention or glory in this role? * Do I like to melt faces? These are all things a priest will deal with, and if you've played one you're familiar with this. It's not a very standard role, and it shows because not a lot of people play a priest. Still, it has its advantages, including your immense popularity when people need to set up a group (this will also be the peak of your popularity, by the way, as once the group wipes, you get the blame too), and a lot of respect from power-gamers if you do your job well. It needs to be added here to be fair that Priests with the proper talents in the Shadow tree do make fabulous solo fighters as well, especially after level 40 when Shadowform becomes available and in 1v1 PVP a skilled Priest is a force to be reckoned with still. Races The first thing to consider with a priest is what race to make them. The following races can play a priest: * Alliance ** Dwarves ** Humans ** Night Elves * Horde ** Trolls ** Undead When choosing a race for your priest, there are a few things to consider. The first is their racial spells. Each race of priest gets 2 race-specific spells, presumably explained by the fact that they worship different deities. Each race also has their own starting areas, some of which tend to be more or less congested based on the popularity of the race. You probably won't want to decide your race based on how easy the early levels will be, but you probably *will* want to consider your leveling strategy based on this, especially if you're starting on a new server. In the end, though, personal taste should be the greatest factor. One race may make a better priest now, but as is the nature of MMORPGs, balancing a game is a continual process, and things can change. The following is a breakdown of the different races. Human Humans start at Northshire Abbey near Goldshire and Stormwind. * Desperate Prayer - ( 10th level quest ) Desperate Prayer is an instant, self-only healing spell. It is a zero mana spell and has a cooldown of 10 minutes. The amount of healing will increase as you level. Dwarf Priests also get this identical spell. * Feedback - ( 20th level ) This has been changed in a recent patch, it used to be on your weapon but now is a global buff on you. Every time a spell is successfully cast against you, the attackers mana is burned and also the same amount of damage is dealt as with mana. This is useful in PvP against mages. Night Elf All the Night Elves start in Shadowglen for 1-5, which is home to Aldrassil, where the trainers and vendors are, and then move through Dolanaar, your base for 5-10, then on to Darnassus and hence to Kalimdor for 10 and up leveling. * Starshards - Acquired from a 10th level quest which is a channelled DoT spell. It has multiple levels which increase the damage per hit and the duration needed to channel. ** 10th level is 18 damage 4 times. ** 18th level is 27 damage 5 times etc. * Elune's Grace - Acquired at 20th level, a buff which does damage reduction on ranged attacks. -X damage from ranged attacks for 3 minutes. It is self-cast only. I don't know if this affects spells or only missile (bow/gun/thrown) type weapons. I will be 20th soon and will then find out -- Dga This spell doesn't reduce large amounts of damage and with mobs being largely melee, it doesn't have much PVE use, but in PVP against hunters it can be extremely useful. There are two notable quests where your services will be in much demand. * Cleansing of the Infected - Kill 20 rabid thistle bears. Once you get cure disease, you can help out with the party members who have become infected. Rabies is -5 Strength and -5 Agility and 50% regen rate penalty for 10 minutes. * Cave Mushrooms - This is the first quest against the Naga and it's in a cave with lots of them and so your talents as a general healer will be much in demand. Dwarf The steadfast dwarves have ever been the bedrock of the Alliance. Their mountain fortresses are marvels of stone and iron, only matched by their legendary skill in battle. The home city of Ironforge lies near the outpost of Anvilmar, which will serve as your starting point. While the dwarves are well known fighters, recent events have suggested that they have a larger part to play in the world and they have bent themselves to the task of discovering what that may be. As such, they have become masters of discovery and knowledge as often as they have become masters of the blade and warhammer. Dwarves receive two spells, 'Desperate Prayer' at level 10, and 'Fear Ward' at level 20. * Desperate Prayer - Desperate Prayer is an instant, self-only healing spell. It is a zero mana spell and has a cooldown of 10 minutes. The amount of healing will increase as you level. * Fear Ward - Fear Ward protects the friendly target against fear. The next fear effect used against the target will fail, using up the ward. Lasts 10 minutes. Undead Starting in the dreary forests of Tirisfal Glades, the Forsaken priests struggle to forge a path for themselves in their new roles. How can you be a preacher for the gods when the gods have abandoned you? From a role-playing and storyline perspective, this is a prominent factor for the Undead priest, one that does not figure much into your gameplay experience, but one that can easily make its way into how you play your character. Obviously someone is out there, because the calls of the Forsaken priests are still answered ... but by who? The Undead receive two spells, 'Touch of Weakness' at level 10, and 'Devouring Plague' at level 20. Additionally, all Undead get the advantage of the 'Will of the Forsaken' racial ability which easily dispels Fear effects and can be a life saver in tight PvP matches with other classes able to fear. Generally, Will of the Forsaken and Devouring Plague are considered the best racial traits for Horde Priests. * Touch of Weakness - Touch of Weakness is a buff that the Priest can cast upon him or herself. It lasts for ten minutes and has only one charge, and once cast, will cause shadow damage to the melee damage inflicter, and affects that target with a debuff that reduces their damage done by a constant amount. The amount of damage done and damage reduced increases with levels. * Devouring Plague - Devouring Plague is a Damage over Time (DoT) spell that inflicts a sizable amount of damage upon an opponent over a 24-second span of time. Every point of damage suffered by Devouring Plague is returned to the Priest in health. This makes for a very useful spell in both PVP and tough PVE encounters. The recast timer on this spell prevents it from being used frequently, so its best not to use it unless you know you're in for a tough fight. The amount of damage done by Devouring Plague improves with increased spell levels. Troll The trolls of the Darkspear tribe travelled west to Kalimdor with Thrall many years ago. They've since settled down in and around Durotar, though the desire to return to their homelands in Stranglethorn Vale still resides in the hearts of many of their ranks. The priests of the troll race serve a similar role to the shaman, that of healer and spiritual leader. Troll priests receive two spells as well, 'Hex of Weakness' at level 10, and 'Shadowguard' at level 20. These spells are somewhat weaker than the racial benefits Undead receive, however Trolls are better off in the department of aesthetics and clever players may be able to fool enemies into thinking them a Shaman through the use of Shadowguard, a spell which shares graphics with Shamans Lightning Shield. * Hex of Weakness - Hex of Weakness is an instant cast 30 yard range spell that reduces x damage done to you by the enemy for 2 minutes. This spell is similar to the Undead's level 10 spell, bar the damage and the need to hit with a meelee weapon to proc. * Shadowguard - Similar to the shaman's spell 'Lightning Shield', casting Shadowguard surrounds the priest with a force of shadow. When the priest is struck in combat, the Shadowguard hits the assailant for shadow damage. The amount of damage done by Shadowguard improves with additional spell levels. Spells For detailed info, see Priest Spells. Key Spells A priest should always use Power Word: Fortitude spell on themselves and any friends before engaging in combat. Make sure to keep this buff active. Inner Fire, obtained at level 12, is a buff that can be cast by the priest on themselves, and is useful to keep up, as it increases the amount of armor you have significantly (with about 200%). Usually a priest should pull with a slow casting Direct Damage spell like Smite (Mind Blast, if there no other mobs nearby the target) at the edge of the spell's range. The next spell should usually be the Damage over Time spell, Shadow Word: Pain, before the enemy gets within melee combat range. Because it is instant cast, you can be backing up while casting it, to extend the amount of time the mob takes to get to you. As you get around 20+ level and if spent most on shadow talents along with Mind Flay, you can use Mind Flay to further slow your target down and give your DoT spell time to do its work. Early on and throughout the adventures of a priest, Power Word: Shield can be used in a fight to instantly prevent some amount of damage to a party member. Be careful to watch whether you or a party member still has a Weakened Soul debuff before you try to cast it again. Though it is not the most efficient way of healing, it is extremely useful, as it instantly absorbs damage to you or a party member. One soloing routine involves casting Power Word: Shield, then waiting until the Weakened Soul debuff times down to about 15 seconds, and then starting combat. This is so that when the mob finally breaks through your shield, the Weakened Soul would have worn off by then, giving you the option to re-shield yourself. With your Shield up, you can think of using another Smite or Mind Blast, but be careful with Mind Blast. Mind Blast generates lots of aggro and in a group environment, may cause the mob to attack you instead of the tank. shield prevents spell interruption from many forms of damage, and will help you (or another spellcaster in your party) when casting spells. You can use Renew (a Heal over Time spell), if you or your party member has more than 75% health, but probably a Lesser Heal if less than that. * An important note about using Power Word: Shield (PW:S) in group situations: : I have repeatedly run into priests who over-use and mis-use this powerful, yet specialized spell. It's extremely important to realize that this spell is limited in it's use and can be spell devastation if used incorrectly. :* First and foremost, PW:S is NOT, I repeat, NOT a heal spell... and as such, should not be use in place of one. If PW:S is cast on a player who will not be taking damage in the next 30 seconds, it is a >>>waste of mana<<<. If PW:S is cast on a player who has less than full health, that health is only healed when: 1) you use more mana to cast a heal on them; or 2) combat ends and they begin regenerating health on their own... which brings me back to the second sentence of this paragraph. :* Second, PW:S should be reserved for three, and ONLY three situations (NO EXCEPTIONS!): :: 1) When there is no possible way in all of heaven and earth that you will be able to heal your target before they die. This means they will die within the next 2 seconds if you don't use PW:S. If they aren't going to die in the next 2 seconds, you had better be casting a heal spell. :: 2) When spell casting, channeling and (god forbid) fleeing cannot afford to be be slowed. Occasionally, there are times when you will be under attack. Yes, it happens to the best of us. IMPORTANT: When this happens, cast Fade. Sometimes, albeit rare, that will not be enough to make the attackers divert their attention. During these rare, unfortunate times, it is permissable to cast PW:S on yourself to allow for a brief moment of un-interrupted spell-casting. -OR- Some classes (mages and warlocks) have spells that are cast over a specific amount of time called channeling spells. These spells can be easily interrupted when damage is taken, so a shield can help them channel the entire spell. -OR- When you turn your tail and flee from enemies, it is useful to cast PW:S on yourself or a friend to help them avoid the Dazed effect. :: 3) When you are about to start a tough fight and your warrior or mage/warlock needs all the extra HP they can get. Called Pre-Shielding, this tactic can give you that extra edge at the beginning of a tough fight and should allow you to take some time to regenerate the mana used before the fight during the fight's opening moments (when the warrior should be generating aggro on the bad-guys. IMPORTANT: You may have noticed that casting PW:S causes a lot of threat and can make things more likely to attack you. As such, DO NOT begin applying PW:S when 1) your puller is shooting his/her gun; 2) your mage is casting thier first spell; 3) at any time after the bad guys start running towards you. If needed, request that your pullers not pull until they see the shields in place. IMPORTANT (#2): Even for the biggest boss fights in the world, you don't have to shield your entire party. Please read the second sentence of the paragraph beginning "First and foremost" if this confuses you. : Like I said before, PW:S is an amazing and powerful spell when it is used correctly. However, it is mana intensive and should be used in special situations, not general healing. * And a contrasting opinion to the above : Power Word: Shield can be extremely useful when you are the sole healer for your party. It is an instant cast spell that will keep someone alive longer. If you have two party members near death, you can opt to Shield one and Heal the other. This buys you, the priest, time to heal them both. * And another contrasting opinion: Power Word: Shield should not be cast on warriors, especially at the beginning of combat, as it makes it more difficult for them to gain aggro. --JiangShi * To contrast again: Power Word: Shield as a pre-shield on warriors. Despite the above's opinion, there is marked division in the healer and warrior community as to whether this is a good or bad idea. Some priests love it...gives aggro-free hp to warrior, giving him more time to gain aggro; some think it a waste. Some warriors love it, others hate it, because it does mean he needs a little more time or he may not be used to it, since it reduces his rage gain a small amount. So, best advice is to consider your views on it and discuss with the tank, coming to an agreement. I have some who ask for it, others who say don't and most who don't care. Of course, if your tank is not a rage-based character, e.g. Paladin,...then by all means go ahead (you will most likely regenerate the mana by the time you need to heal anyway). * To contrast even further: The following EU forum's post denies that Power Word: Shield reduces rage generation. Talents At level 10, every class begins to accrue what are called 'Talent Points'. You can apply these points instantly to your character by accessing the 'Talent' menu, which becomes accessible upon reaching level 10. For a look at the Priest talents and how they interact, you can generally head over to The WoWVault Talent Tool. You can also look at other players' preferred talent layouts for an idea of how you may want to build your own priest. Of course, you may want to build your priest in your own way, in which case you may still want to look at this to at least help yourself plan things out. Priests receive talents in three different trees: * Shadow - These represent the darker side of priesthood. The shadow talents focus largely on increasing a priest's damage output through his or her Shadow spells. Specializing in shadow talents lends towards a more solo approach to the game, as a shadow priest's abilities don't generally stack well with teammates; particularly in large PVP environments or tough instanced dungeons where priests are generally in short-demand and needed for their superior ability to act as a healer. This should not be taken to understand that a Shadow Priest cannot live up to the task however which is quite possible. Many players will specialize in shadow talents up to level 55-60, and then switch to a Holy/Discipline hybrid. As a starting point it may be helpful to invest your first 5 points into Spirit Tap, then Improved Shadow Word: Pain followed by 3 points into Blackout, then get Mindflay and then 5/5 in Mind Blast. After this for leveling purposes either getting Improved Power Word: Shield from the discipline tree is an option or going down the path to Shadowform. * Discipline - The discipline spells focus on inner strength, boosting a priest's mana, improving their buff spells significantly, etc. Many Discipline talents are very useful no matter what you specialize in. Additionally for end game healing the Discipline tree provides talents which allows a percentage mana regeneration to continue while casting, a talent to increase maximum spirit, a talent to cast a spell free of mana and a talent to maximize total mana by up to 10%. * Holy - Holy talents are vital to maximizing your efficiency as a healer, which is why most high-level priests elect to focus on these talents. It is a general consensus however that the end tree talents of the holy tree are not worth the talent points required to get them and hence many priests up to specialize into holy to include inspiration, subtelty and possibly Improved Flash Heal or Improved Prayer of Healing. The holy line improves your healing power, lowers the mana cost of heals, and reduces the casting time of some healing spells. There is more to the holy line, too, so you may want to look through the aforementioned The WoWVault Talent Tool to get a full look. Talent discussion For an overview of (not only Priest) talent builds see the Talent Builds Guide. In the beginning, a Priest is a very fragile thing. One add is highly dangerous, two usually mean run away or death. The main problem is that there are very few instant cast priest spells, thus most (especially the mana-efficient ones) spells are subject to interruption by damage. Further, a priest has no crowd control (except the highly dangerous fear), no AOE damage, and no pet. In sum, this leads to frustration, and many promising priest careers end before level 20. There's not much to be done about this problem - low level solo priests are not fun. The best idea is to find a group. If you want to give your priest some solo ability, concentrate on the Shadow Tree. The principal drawbacks remain true - priests never gain AOE or real CC, but after level 40, Shadowpriests gain a lot of survivability, and a very high DPS output vs. single targets. Useful Professions Primary Professions * Tailoring : Tailoring is immediately useful to a priest, they can wear the cloth armor they make. Additionally, for new players, having the ability to make your own bags is incredibly valuable during the early stages of the game. * Skinning : Skinning is a very good choice for Priests new to the game as it allows them to gather up leather to sell at the Auction House from their prey killed while leveling. While not useful to the Priest directly the money is scorned by no one and it may be useful for the Priest to spend several seconds out of combat resting as mana regeneration only begins 5 seconds after a succesful spellcast. Hence this time would not be wasted. * Mining : Mining like Skinning and Herbalism is one of the gathering professions and hence requires very little money invested to rise to the top levels of the skill. Additionally, there is good money to be made mining Thorium and Mithril, however mining may be better suited as a supporting talent to those players who chose to go for Blacksmithing. * Herbalism and Alchemy : Even if, as a caster, the Priest can rely on his own abilities to heal and buff himself, additional potions are always welcome. Of specific note here are potions which allow the user to dispel and render himself immune to all forms of poison for 1 minute, an ability of vital importance when fighting hunters in PvP. Additionally, potions increasing the player's maximum armor value and potions which restore health points and mana points are invaluable at times. * Enchanting : Although not specifically good for a Priest, the many items a Priest can't use can be made useful with Disenchant to provide reagents for enchanting. At higher levels and in guilds, enchanting can be both profitable and sought after. Tailoring can complement enchanting by supplying items to disenchant. * Engineering : Engineering offers a wide array of trinkets and gadgets which a priest can use in order to help himself in 1v1 or even group PvP fights. For the most part, however, Priests won't find many of the Engineer's toys to be as useful as other classes might find them. For instance, the popular Jumper Cables are useless with access to the Resurrection spell. Some Engineering examples include: Exploding Sheep, a Net-o-Magic, the Mind Control Cap, a Gnomish Death Ray and others. * Blacksmithing : Blacksmithing is, more or less, utterly useless to priests. This profession is best left to those who can use the armor, weapons and tools it can make. Secondary Professions * First Aid : Although it may seem redundant, First Aid is an extremely valuable skill for priests to master. It is a very useful way to enhance your role as a healer while preserving mana and compliments the Shadowform talent nicely. Shadowform costs nearly 500 mana to activate, so canceling it to heal is very expensive. Additionally, the 5-second mana rule doesn't activate due to bandaging, so you will continue to regenerate mana throughout. During long fights, spending a few seconds to bandage yourself or a nearby group-mate saves mana and allows full regeneration to continue. * Cooking : Like First Aid, Cooking further solidifies your role, but as a buffer. Some higher recipes offer significant boosts to Spirit and Stamina. And for the buff-happy, making a cozy fire in the middle of the area where you will be pulling a large number of mobs can give that extra special fuzzy feeling to your group's destruction. * Fishing : The large amount of patience required to keep up a good fishing skill will make up for itself when soloing, or even running instances. Most often, priests will heal themselves after a battle, using up more mana and consequently requiring more time for regeneration. But with fishing, just whip out those dead fish you caught earlier on and heal yourself the old-fashioned way! Or, give a stack or two of fish to everyone in your party before entering an instance, and you'll find yourselves requiring less time for regen breaks, and you might even save yourself some post-fight healing mana. You can eat your fish raw, or partner up the skill with Cooking to cook your fish, earning yourself some easy cooking skill, and not to mention, better food. Fishing is a good break from constant grinding, as well as a good participant in multitasking with your talent tree or inventory organization. While these skills contribute very little relative to the other buffs and heals you provide, in the right situation, they are highly effective tools and help in making the impression with your group that you are serious about your role. Mods Some Priests swear by them, others claim to be capable of doing their job without any add-ons whatsoever. It is a matter of personal preference. Certain add-ons may be required however by High End guilds for raiding. Among the more noteworthy are: * Groupbuttons This mod provides you with 8 highly configurable action bars of 20 buttons each. Each bar is assigned to a specific target: one for you, one for each party member, one for friendly targets, one for hostile targets, one that targets the member of the party with the lowest health. A bar doesn't display if its target is unavailable (i.e., self bar always displays, a party bar only displays if you're grouped with at least 1 other person, etc.). Clicking a button on one of the bars will use its action on the person to whom the bar is assigned then immediately switch you back to your previous target. You can also set a spell on a bar to assist the bar's target before casting, in which case it won't return you to your previous target. This mod (and a few other highly useful ones) can be found at the Discord home page Additionally, you can set spells to cast when you hold down a combination of ctrl, alt, and shift and click on a unit frame. It works just the same as pressing the button so all your options for that spell are applied. This currently works with the default unit frames, Discord Unit Frames, MiniGroup, Nurfed Unit Frames, Nymbia's Perl Unit Frames, and WatchDog. * Benecast BeneCast is a tool to help the player cast beneficial spells on themselves, their party members, and friendly targets. It does so by allowing the player to pick and choose what spells they want to show up as clickable buttons next to the intended target from the BeneCast interface. This AddOn does not use action bar slots or ids, despite it using buttons. So it should play nice with other mods. It is also standalone. * Castparty CastParty is a party/player frame that provides the following: - tight cluster of health/mana bars for player and party - programmable functions for mouse clicks in combination with Alt, Control and Shift As it grew from the Healomatic code base, it also contains: - click a bar to apply appropriate heal to selected player - key binding to apply appropriate heal to player nearest to death - key binding to force efficient/emergency/instant/group healing * Decursive This is a cleaning mod. Its job it to help a class that can remove debuffs, do it with ease. Load the mod, bind a key (or create a macro ?/decursive?) and run, no further configuration or editing needed, it auto configures. Run the mod when ever you wish to cleanse a status ailment, or even think one might be on your target, party, or even raid party, if nothing is cleaned, there is no penalty or cool down. * Whispercast Furthermore certain packages allow players to modify the graphical user interface of WoW, some of which I will list here; * CT_Raid Assist * Insomniax Mod * Flexbar What else? Priests are fragile, yes, but the starting areas are forgiving enough that you can give yourself a huge advantage by keeping yourself reasonably well-geared: * Good-quality armor is available and desirable at low levels. The Priest trainer in the town closest to each starting area has a quest that has a good-quality chest with +1 Spirit as a reward. You can also hire a tailor to make good-quality cloth armor pieces for you, or learn Tailoring and make them yourself. (If you become a Tailor, remember that only humanoids drop cloth. If you're on Teldrassil, this means sprites and furbolgs.) * Learn Staves from the weapons trainer in Darnassus or Ogrimmar. Staves tend to have better stat bonuses for Priests, and enchanters can enchant 2H weapons long before they can enchants 1H. * Obtain armor kits from a leatherworker or the Auction House, and make sure your equipped chest, hand, leg, and foot armor always has a kit applied. Remember to apply a new armor kit when you equip new armor, and to upgrade the type of kits you're using as you level. * A wand is an absolute MUST as a solo Priest. It deals amazing DSP, grants a powerful ranged attack and can be used continually at zero range! It may get a bit tedious after awhile, but it's more than made up for with the added survivability factor! You can usually find a Lesser Wand in the AH at a reasonable price. If you choose Enchanting as one of your professions, you'll have an easy route to a Greater Magic Wand that you can use at level 13, but plan on buying your first wand as counting on good enough drops to disenchant can be folly. * While the +1 Spirit Robe is a nice reward for an easy quest early on, it's not the best armor you can get at that level. Generally, you can buy some chest cloth armor with a better rating cheaply. While you won't get the Spirit boost, it may be a decent edge early in your career. If you are between levels 1 and 5, you will always want to use your damage spell instead of your weapon. In these levels, you will almost always kill an NPC with it before you run out of mana. Regeneration is fast. Try to get a wand at the earliest moment possible though. Especially the arcane wands low level enchanters can create provide an excellent DPS boost helping you to kill mobs without running out of mana. Running out of ideas and time at the moment. Feel free to include anything else a possible priest may want to consider in the creation and early progression of their priest. Playing to your strengths Each class in WoW has a role -- rogues are melee DPS, mages are ranged DPS, warriors are tanks, etc. The role of the priest is healing: we can heal better than any other class in the game. While a priest can also be damage-oriented with a shadow build, they still do not out-damage either a mage or a warlock (though shadow priests do have some nifty tricks like Feedback). If you play a priest, be prepared to play your role as first and foremost a healer. To maximize your effectiveness as a healer, you should spend your talent points in the Holy (and Discipline) trees. The kinds of equipment bonuses you want to collect are: "+healing" (gives a boost to heal spells) warning: the full effect of a "+healing" bonus is only realized on spells that last at least 3.5 seconds. Since Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing only take 3 seconds to cast, they receive a diminished benefit from the +healing bonus. I believe (but am not certain!) that it scales algebraically, and they receive 3/3.5 (about 86%) of the benefit. The benefit is even smaller with Flash Heal (1.5s) at around 43%. However, the effect of a Renew lasts for 15s and gets the full benefit of +healing gear. Additionally, since Renew is an instant cast limited only by the global cooldown timer, it can be cast on many people in a short amount of time. The moral of the story: don't underestimate the usefulness of Renew! "+intellect" (gives you more mana) there is no drawback to maximizing intellect. At least one of these is a no-brainer upgrade. :) "+spirit" (regenerates more mana) spirit affects your health and mana regeneration rate. Mana regeneration is very important for priests, as it increases the amount of healing they can do over the course of a battle. However, the mana regeneration from spirit is subjected to something called the "5 second rule", which is that you get no mana regeneration from spirit in the 5 seconds after a successful cast. "+mana/5sec" (regenerates more mana) this bonus is better than +spirit because it is not subject to the 5-second rule. Soloing Soloing with a priest is not as hard as you'd think, given that you're the one class in the game that's not meant to engage in combat. The trick is to stay alive longer than the other guy (rather than kill him before he kills you). Let me explain: if you're a rogue, you have no healing abilities, so the only way you'll win an encounter is by making sure the other guy dies before you do. Hence, your priority is to kick out as much damage as you possibly can. However, that's not going to work for a priest because they don't have nearly the damage output that other classes have...but they do have healing abilities. Your priority is making sure you stay healed, and your secondary objective is wearing down your enemy. A typical mob battle looks like this: slow-casting opener such as Holy Fire Mind Blast Shadow Word: Pain Renew wand ..continue with wand and SW:P... If you start to run low on health, you can pop an instant Renew on you, or pop up a shield and cast any of your standard heal spells. If you're taking on an elite, the strategy changes a bit to handle the longer, harder fight. First, you want to start the fight with your shield already up (and preferably with your Weakened Soul debuff almost gone). Second, you want to sacrifice some of your DPS in order to have more mana for healing and shields. Power Word: Shield Holy Fire Shadow Word: Pain Wand Power Word: Shield Greater Heal Shadow Word: Pain wand ..continue with wand, shield, heal, and SW:P... If you're taking on a group of enemies, Power Word: Shield is your friend. If that's not enough, Psychic Scream can send them away for a while (but with potentially disasterous results). If you get outnumbered and can't heal faster than they can damage, don't be reluctant to run -- being a priest means you're not supposed to be able to handle lots of combat. ---- Priest,Starting Priest,Starting